Crock Pot Boot Camp

Good evening troops, I'm focusing today on the mess hall. By this I mean food and not the bit 'ol mess in my damn hall that nobody will clean up! Why do we have so many jackets and shoes?! Jeesh. Anywho, back to the mess hall food edition....

While on my journey to finding the thinner person within myself I have developed a deep love for my crock pot. Talk about an easy way to have healthy meals ready when you get home! On one of my recon missions I overheard a woman say that you can cook virtually any meat in the crock pot with just enough of your favorite sauce to cover the meat and set it for 8 hours on low. Hmmm. I went back to my bunker and started pondering this secret of the crock pot universe and decided I had to test this theory myself. I took my vehicle to the secret store of excess (Costco), bought some chicken, pasta sauce and veggies and set off back to the bunker. For this experiment I chose three different colors of bell peppers and a mixture of little heirloom squash, so darn cute. I cut them up, put them on the bottom, threw the chicken on the top and dumped the heart healthy pasta sauce over it all and set the crock pot to medium for 8 hours. When I woke up this morning my house smelled like an Italian restaurant and the sauce had turned into a soup with all the moisture from the veggies and steam. Damn son, this was the most tasty dish and it was only 3 points for two ladles full!! The chicken was so tender it fell apart and the veggies were perfect. Even Emma loved it which says a lot since she's no fan of chicken. I'm hooked on the easy crock pot inventions now. Tomorrow I'll do something with some chicken, teriyaki sauce, pineapple and maybe asparagus!

Now on to the real new from the battle front. I'm still struggling to hold back the sugar army. I don't know why I'm having such a hard time this time but it's kinda kicking my butt. I do really well with the fight and then I'll go nuts eating cinnamon lips from a Valentine's candy mix. We went through and made sure there was nothing to temp me, but we splurged on the candy and now I regret it. The good news is it was just a half a cup of mix. I need to eliminate the enemy, I'm going to brain wash myself in to just thinking I don't like sweets. I'll tell myself this over and over and hopefully I'll win the war. For now I just avoid as many of the sugar land mines as I can and go on about my day. Drinking green tea all day definitely helps, it's not sweet but the hot water makes me not crave the sweet so much. So if you see me marching across the battlefield with my trusty blue patterned canteen you'll know it's me marching farther away from the sugar army.

Until we meet again, keep up the good fight! I've met my next WW goal so now I'm on a mission to lose at least 5 pounds in the next couple of weeks. Root me on friends, when this war is over we'll have a ticker tape parade made from fruit leather and drink freshly blended smoothies with spinach sneaked into them! Always remember this, cans and boxes are not your friends, they disguise themselves as such but don't fall for it! They're just sugar disguised as "healthy" food, I fell for this trap and I won't see you do it too. Use the cans to throw them at your scale when you weigh yourself, it feels great!

Sgt. Sugar Lumps...out!
xoxo

Fight fat with a little Veggie soup!

Hello from the trenches. I don't really know how many days it's been since this war started, something like 14 days, maybe less, maybe more. It's hard to keep track of the days when you're at war. The sugar doesn't stop, it's everywhere I look. I am pleased to announce that even though the attacks keep coming I have now officially lost the pounds I put on during my vacation & the holidays so I'm back to 15 pounds down from the original starting weight. I'm hoping that I can keep tipping the scale in my favor. I fought the glorious fight with delicious veggie soup. I've been eating veggie soup every day for lunch during the week and lots of fruit and at night I eat a light meal so that's been helping take the weight off. I also read that green tea is great to help melt belly fat so I drink my one cup of coffee in the morning and green tea the rest of the day. Even if it does nothing for melting the fat it's way better than anything else I drink other than water. So it's a win win situation.
There's a woman at work who is doing the Medifast diet, she's been doing it since maybe a week or two after I started Weight Watchers and she's lost 25 pounds so far. Even thought I haven't lost as much as her I'm pretty proud that I've been able to make a steady decline without having to eat only dehydrated food and weird shakes. It's been eye opening learning to eat properly. Not that I'm perfect by any means, I do have a red velvet cheese cake sitting in my freezer right now, but you can't win a war without a little struggle.
OK warriors, I'm off to make my week's worth of veggie soup now, I'm going for a delicious Wonton soup this time. Mmmmmmm, mmmmm!

xoxo

Hello from the trenches

January 5, 2013....day three of my war against sugar. I'm hunkered down in my fox hole but I'm under a rapid fire attack and just trying to keep myself barricaded. The sugar is putting up a good fight and I haven't been as strong as I had hoped, I had to retreat a little this week (I say this as I'm pushing the Hot Tamales farther out of my reach). I'm regrouping, rebuilding my fortress and I'll start anew tomorrow. I'll be getting more rations tomorrow and will fortify my supply of fresh fruit and veggies. This war is going to be very tough and I'm going to take a beating, but it's a war worth fighting. I'm recruiting soldiers if any of you want to join my platoon. Oh, I have to go now, I sense a night attack coming, the hot tamales are chanting and jumping in their bag, I have to put down the computer and run away screaming. *whispering* I'll write again very soon to keep you updated on the war.

xoxo
Sgt. Sugar Lumps

It's 2013 and there are no flying cars yet!

Happy new year friends!! I can't believe it's already 2013. Do you remember when you were little and totally thought that by this time in the future we would have flying cars, houses that cooked for you and all the things they tempted us with in futuristic movies? I can tell you I never dreamed that it would still be so mundane, although technology is advancing quickly. So I'm going to do a quick recap on the year and continue back on my path to weight loss blogging. All in all this hasn't been the worst year ever. Our house didn't get robbed again, I got a new van and now I'm on my way to a healthier me. I feel like I've become a better person this year, I've put a lot of things in perspective and really determined what's important. As much as I love to shop and get new stuff, I have learned that the stuff we have is not important at all. Losing all our prized possessions last year made me realize that none of it was that important at all. The only things I lost that still make me sad are the pictures and heirloom jewelry that can't be replaced, I don't have any feelings of loss or sadness for anything else, even the stuff that wasn't replaced. On the bright side I'm awesome at backing my pics and stuff up now!! I learned that I'm a stronger person than I thought, I decided the show kindness and understanding to the woman at work who was making my life miserable and now we have a comfortable peace, I actually enjoy my job again! I realized that I'm not working to make her happy, I'm working to make my family's lives better so that makes it easy for me to be happy. Last but not least I've learned where the most delicious Mac & Cheese cart in town is so I can make a return trip and enjoy the decadence!! Happy 2013 y'all!

Now on the the real business....While in Orlando I only gained 2 lbs, woot, woot!! I was so relieved. Now for the bad news.... I got hooked on the sugar again! Ok, I can hear you all shouting "No! Say it ain't so!" but I'm coming clean. It all started with a Mickey Mouse shaped rice crispy treat (it's tradition, I always get one when I go to Disney parks!), then it's like the old comfortable coat of sugar addiction enveloped me. I really tried to say no, I even tried to be good when I came back and there were sugary treats all over my office from people baking every damn night and bringing in their poison. But it was too late, the seal had been broken and I've been struggling ever since. I think sugar addiction is harder to quit than any drug, there's no heroin added to bread or cereal, no meth or crack put in ketchup and drinks. You have to go out of your way to feed a drug addiction, you only need to open a cabinet and look at the ingredients in your most "healthy" snack and see that some form of sugar is added. So I'm back to square one and it's almost worse than before because I had a taste and it set me into a frenzy. So once again the cabinets have been cleared of anything overtly sugary (which thank goodness there wasn't much) and I did my shopping tonight and bought all fresh foods. As I sit here typing this I have a big pot of vegetable soup on the stove and the ingredients for sugar free pumpkin cookies standing by to be combined tomorrow. Maybe it will be easier this time since I've done it before. I'm optimistic and have the family dinners already planned and the new crock pot is itching to be started in the morning. So here we go again my friends, to date I have lost 12 pounds (it was 15 minus the two I gained in Orlando and the one I've gained since being back). Here's to 2013 kicking butt and minimizing my waist.

xoxo